Can You Eat Fruit on a Low-Carb Diet? It Depends

Most people agree that fruits fit perfectly into a healthy lifestyle routine.

However, people on a low-carb diet tend to avoid fruits. There are even low-carbers who go to extremes and say that fruit is downright unhealthy.

Meanwhile, most health and lifestyle professionals advise people to eat fruit every day.

As a result, the question whether fruit is acceptable on a low-carb diet seems to come up all the time. This article takes a close look at the evidence.

Fruits and Low-Carb — the Dilemma
The primary goal of low-carb diets is carb restriction.

This involves limiting the foods that contain the most carbohydrates, including candy, sugary soft drinks and root vegetables like potatoes, as well as grain products like pasta and bread.

But fruits, despite the health halo, also tend to be fairly rich in carbohydrates, primarily the simple sugars, glucose and fructose.

Here is the net carb (total carbs – fiber) count for a few fruits:

Grapes (1 cup / 151g) 26 grams
Banana (1 medium) 24 grams
Pear (1 medium) 22 grams
Apple (1 medium) 21 grams
Pineapple (1 cup / 165g) 20 grams
Blueberries (1 cup / 148g) 17 grams
Oranges (1 medium) 12 grams
Kiwi (1 medium) 9 grams
Strawberries (1 cup / 144g) 8 grams
Lemon (1 fruit) 6 grams
Fruits are much higher in carbs than low-carb veggies but lower in carbs than foods like bread or pasta.

SUMMARY
Fruits are generally high in carbs. For this reason, you need to moderate your fruit intake on a low-carb diet.
Spend Your Carb Budget Wisely
It’s important to keep in mind that not all low-carb diets are the same. There is no clear definition of exactly what constitutes a low-carb diet.

Whether any one person can or should include fruit in their diet depends on a lot of things.

This includes their current goals, activity levels, current metabolic health and personal preference.

A person who aims to eat no more than 100–150 grams of carbs per day can easily fit in several pieces of fruit per day without going over their limit.

However, someone who is on a very low-carb ketogenic diet with under 50 grams per day doesn’t really have much room.

Instead of spending the entire carb budget on 1 or 2 pieces of fruit, it would be better spent eating plenty of low-carb vegetables, which are much more nutritious, calorie for calorie.